WHY I DON'T WORK FOR RINGLING BROS ANYMORE

This is the last time I tell this story. I'm sick of it and I don't think it's so funny, but the people who get me to tell it always laugh uproariously. I suspect they are laughing at me, not with me.
My last season as a clown with Ringling Brothers Circus was in 1978. I had just completed a two-year voluntary mission for my church in Thailand and was stone broke back in Minneapolis with no palatable options for work outside of my old job at the circus as a clown.
So I called up Old Man Feld, the guy who bought the circus from the last of the Ringlings. He liked me, said I was a real nut and just the kind of zany to bring new life into clown alley. He said fly to Cleveland this weekend and there'll be an opening for you in clown alley. At a salary of 250 a week. For a Ringling clown that was okay money. I borrowed the plane fare from the folks and showed up at the arena Sunday morning with my makeup, costume, and musical saw. I was in the show that evening, doing odds-and-ends around the other clowns and their gags.
Getting paid to goof off and living on the train in my own dusty roomette while we traveled all over the country --for a single guy like me it was a pretty sweet deal. The only canker in the bud was the Mighty Michu.
The Mighty Michu was billed as the World's Smallest Man. He came up to my kneecap. He was from Czechoslovakia -- before that country was hyphenated. He liked to drink. And for some unaccountable reason he was put in clown alley. I was given the job of carrying him around in my arms during Spec -- the big costume parade that precedes intermission. His little legs couldn't get him around the arena any too quickly. I carried him and he waved gaily at the crowds, all the while cursing me in hair-curling language under his breath every time I jostled him in the slightest. There was no love lost between the Mighty Michu and me. But outside of the piggyback ride I gave him during Spec we went our separate ways, avoiding each other with studied politeness.
Until, that is, one Sunday near the end of the season.
It was my habit on Sunday mornings to get up early whilst everyone else wallowed in their beds to go to morning services at church. I didn't rub it in anyone's face that I went and didn't think of myself as any better than those who did not succumb to the beat of Onward Christian Soldiers. I went because I was used to going and enjoyed the company of my fellow worshippers.
This particular Sunday I returned to the arena in a foul mood, with hardly a Christian sentiment left in me. I usually got a ride back to work after church from a friendly member, but this Sunday when I asked in Sunday School if someone could give me a lift I was met with stony silence. So I had to pay for a cab back to the building. On 250 per, that put an unexpected gouge in my pocket. Plus the cab driver was a dunce who didn't know where he was going, so I was late scuttling into clown alley. Charlie Baumann, the formidable German Performance Director, gave me a deep scowl on my way in and rumbled that I'd better hurry it up, dumkopf, or I would miss the pre-show warm-up the clowns were obligated to do.
I sat down at my trunk as tense as a rubberband around a phonebook. Attempting some sanity before getting on the war paint, I flipped open my scriptures to read a passage or two to regain some Christian composure.
That is when the Mighty Michu ambled over, three-sheets-to-the-wind. He had a bottle of beer in his tiny hand. I ignored him as I struggled through a passage in one of Saint Paul's epistles. Michu calmly poured the beer all over my leather-bound Bible.
Now what would you do? Write a letter to the editor?
I'll tell you what I did. I picked up that drunken little momser and put him inside his own wardrobe trunk. And then locked it. Then I cleaned myself off and started to put on my makeup.
Someone let him out after five minutes of banging and screaming. A few minutes later I was arraigned before the awful Charlie Baumann on the charge of Molesting one of the Little People -- a treasonable offence in the circus world. I denied nothing, simply pointing out that my expensive Bible was ruined, my Sunday slacks smelled like Joe's Bar & Grill, and that Michu was continuing to curse me in fluent Czech and coarse English, and that he was in no condition to go out in front of those trusting boys and girls since he was as likely to give them the finger as to wave at them. Baumann agreed with me, but could not save me from the prescribed sentence. Banishment and exile from Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows.
Since then I have worked for just about every other circus in America. Some were glamorous and paid very well; some were mudshows that redlighted me without a dime in my pocket. All in all, it's been, shall we say, a savory experience.
And the Mighty Michu, what of him? He soon left the circus when he got a better offer to be the animating spirit of Alf, the lovable space alien on TV. He worked that gig until the show was canceled and then, if the rumor is true, settled into a frowzy apartment in Burbank where he lives off of his rerun checks and guzzles pilsner until it flows out his rat-like ears.
But I hold no grudge. I wish him well -- and you know what well rhymes with . . .